Big three wireless carriers all hike rate plans

Two smartphone users.

Photograph by: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Canadians signing up for new cellphone plans are in for a shock. Some of the most popular data plans for smartphones have seen baseline prices go up by about $5 per month.

Under the old pricing schemes common to wireless carriers in Canada, basic cellphone plans hovered around $50 to $60. A single gigabyte of data per month — widely considered the minimum for regular email, social media and web browsing — could be added for between $15 and $20 for a total between $70 and $85.

The new $80 per month plans only include 500MB of data, half of what has become normal for many consumers.

The new plans increase by $5 to $10 per month as data caps go up. Many observers have pointed out that the new price plans are almost identical across all three major wireless carriers in Canada, and all three made the changes to new price plans at almost the same time.

Bell plans are available here. Telus plans are available here. Rogers plans are available here. Current contracts are unaffected by the change.

Shawn Hall, a spokesman for Telus, said the speculation that all three big carriers updated their pricing plans at the same time is simply wrong.

“The information out there is wrong. Incorrect. Erroneous,” he said. “We increased rates on some of our rates in January.”

Telus also noted that they had actually reduced their rate plans on the 500MB and 1GB data packages by $5 per month in March.

Current plans available through Telus are very similar to those plans offered through Rogers and Bell, except when you get to the high end of the market and there are some discounts on data rates.

Rogers issued a statement on Wednesday afternoon.

“Like any business, we regularly adjust our prices and the services we offer. We do this not only in our wireless business but across all products we offer our customers,” they wrote, noting that not all price plans changed. “These changes do not affect a customer’s current plan. They only apply to customers who choose to sign up for one of these new plans.”

Canada.com has also reached out to Bell for comment and will update this article when they reply.

Wireless rate plans are sticky subject with Canadians. In fact, the federal government has recently launched a high-profile ad campaign against the big three wireless companies and their approach to consumers. Advertisements like these have flooded the airwaves.

Yet prices continue to rise.

Michael Geist, an activist and academic in Canadian internet and wireless policy, believes it all comes back to the lack of competition in the Canadian wireless space. He told Newstalk 1010 that “Until we get more competition in the marketplace, I don’t think there’s any doubt we’ll see fees continue to increase in the future.”

As he pointed out on his blog in July, Canada ranks in the top 10 most expensive countries in the OECD for wireless services. The CRTC backed up these findings in a 2013 report (PDF) that found: “Canadian Level 1 mobile Internet service rates fall on the high-side of the average of the group of surveyed countries and Canadian Level 2 mobile Internet service rates are higher of those measured in all five surveyed countries.”

It should be noted that because of Canada’s sheer size, implementing infrastructure for our relatively small population is a significantly higher investment per customer than in other countries.

As Telus noted in a statement emailed to Canada.com: “The new SharePlus plan rates better reflect the costs of providing wireless service and the multi-billion-dollar investments we make to ensure our customers have access to the world-class wireless coverage, reliability and speed they demand.”

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